John Tesar’s publicist, Dawn Britt, has sent a press release stating that the chef is “joining Oak restaurant as a Chef Partner, overseeing the kitchen while leading and training the culinary team.”

The release continues as follows: “‘We are confident that this partnership will bring to Oak the experience we have always wanted to offer,’ says Richard Ellman. Expect to see new menu items by mid-February.

“Tesar’s role with Knife at The Highland Dallas will not alter in any way. Says Tesar, ‘You’ll continue to still see me there plenty and Knife will continue doing the incredible business that it has been doing, ensuring every customer has a great experience. We love being at The Highland and nothing about that will be any different.’”

UPDATE: 8 a.m. Friday

Chef Tesar has not responded to my request for comment. I’m waiting to hear back from Oak’s publicist and Tesar’s publicist with details about the chef’s arrangement with Oak.

UPDATE: 1:40 p.m.

I have contacted John Tesar by phone and email seeking his comment; will update again when and if I hear back from him.

UPDATE: 10:20 a.m.

I just heard back from John Tesar’s publicist, Dawn Britt, who sent me the following statement via email: “No deal is done, there have only been discussions. John who is a chef owner, operator and restaurateur- of whatever he does- has constant discussions with other restaurateurs all over the country all the time as it is his passion as well as his business. He is always interested in discussing ways to expand his business of providing excellent food in exciting new ways.”

Tesar, apparently in transit, has tweeted that he will be available for comment after 1:30 p.m.; I will reach out to him at that time.

ORIGINAL POST

Well, you may have read of John Tesar’s plan to open an Italian restaurant called Fork, or his plan to reopen his seafood restaurant, Spoon, sometime down the line. But I don’t believe you read anywhere that he was considering going to Oak – the graceful Modern American restaurant in the Dallas Design District — to take over as executive chef. And yet crazy as it sounds, that’s what is happening.

Brian Zenner — who earned four stars at Oak in a September review – told me this evening that he gave his notice at Oak last week. “I felt after the time I spent with Aphelia,” he says, “it was time to move on.” The catalyst, he said, was ”a great opportunity to work with some great people and do some interesting, imaginative things.” To wit, he is joining forces with Adam Salazar and Chris Beardon to open two new bar-restaurants. One, called the Mitchell, is downtown on Main Street in the former Chesterfield space; Rudy Mendoza will be chef, according to Zenner. (Sarah Blaskovich reported on both back in October, before Zenner’s involvement was known.) Mendoza, says Zenner, was chef de cuisine at Belly and Trumpet.

2014 file

Brian Zenner

The second establishment, to be called On Premise, will be in Deep Elllum, in the former Lemongrass Asian Bistro space. “I’m not sure whether I’ll be heading up that kitchen,” says Zenner, but says he will somehow be involved. It will likely be a “different type of role to start. I’m not necessarily looking to get to a kitchen right away.” He expects the restaurant, which will have a “lounge-slash-restaurant” feel, to open in early March. The menu will have an Asian accent: “little grilled skewers, like a yakitori set-up — hopefully some food that the Deep Elllum crowd would be into.

Meanwhile, Tesar is stepping in to fill his shoes. ”John Tesar will be the exec chef at Oak and will still continue running Knife,” Oak’s publicist, Sally Spaulding, told me by email this evening. “John will cook in Oak’s global, contemporary cuisine style, but some changes diners will likely see on the menu will include the addition of ‘a macdaddy steak’ and more seafood dishes.” From Oak co-owner Richard Ellman, she sent the following words: “Food-wise, it will be Spoon meets the Mansion, with a hefty dose of approachability.”

If you’re thinking, OK, this is weird. Yes. This is weird. Among the questions it raises: What will become of Knife? How long will the peripatetic Tesar stay at Oak, and will he have a stake in it or serve as a chef for hire? (I’m still trying clarify some details.) Does he still intend to open Fork? Will he ever reopen Spoon? Flatware on the loose! Meanwhile, keep on eye on Zenner: He’s very talented, so it will be interesting to see what he cooks up with Salazar and Beardon. Stay tuned.

Arctic char with spring pea emulsion, as it was served in 2013 at Spoon

Here’s an interesting piece from the Observer’s Scott Reitz about the closing of Spoon Bar and Kitchen, John Tesar’s seafood restaurant in Preston Center. “Tesar is adamant that the restaurant will be reopened at a new address, but that’s not until he’s opened up a third restaurant concept, and even then he doesn’t know where,” writes Reitz. “Fork, Tesar’s new Italian restaurant, is set to open in the Design District but the timeline is still vague.” Pointing to a hotel development deal Tesar is involved with in Wilmington, North Carolina, Reitz adds “If Tesar can’t find a suitable location in Dallas, Spoon is headed to the east coast, where seafood restaurants, refined or otherwise, make a bit more sense.”

I’m not convinced that Dallas can’t or won’t support an ambitious, inventive seafood restaurant; I suspect that if Tesar had kept his focus at Spoon (and perhaps if he hadn’t sold it to Chanticleer Holdings), that restaurant might have had continued success. As far as Driftwood — another ambitious seafood spot that closed last month – goes, I believe the prices were too high (especially for Oak Cliff) and, as at Spoon, the owners’ and chef’s attention was spread too thin with the opening of a second restaurant, in their case Proof + Pantry.

I also don’t buy the idea that seafood restaurants can’t do well here because Dallas is landlocked. All over the country, seafood is flown into restaurants from far-flung places — wild Alaskan salmon and Dungeness crab are flown to the East Coast, North Atlantic oysters are flown to the West Coast, and so on. It long ago became the way sourcing happens.

I think if an enterprising chef with great ideas and a creative approach opened a moderately priced, inventive and ambitious seafood restaurant, Dallasites would eat it up. What do you think?

A couple of observations. First, the loss of these two establishments leaves us with woefully few good seafood restaurants. When I wrote about The Best in DFW: Seafood Restaurants in June 2013, I singled out Driftwood and Spoon as being in a league apart from the rest. I haven’t heard of anyone out there who’s making a move to fill the void.

Second, it raises the issue of the difficulties faced by restaurateurs or chef-owners who try to maintain more than one chef-driven restaurant at a time. The chef-owners around the country who have made this kind of thing work tend to have something in common: They do not open a second restaurant until they have a solid chef and team in place in the first one. Often that involves leaving restaurant number one in the hands of a chef with considerable creativity and experience and the chops not just to execute well, but to draw diners on his or her own merits. Having one chef successfully run two chef-driven restaurants with different concepts at the same time is not something we’ve seen much of ’round these parts. (Stephan Pyles is probably a notable exception — but he has seemingly put strong teams, with strong chefs, in place.) This is why when a chef with a successful restaurant with a distinct personality opens a new restaurant with the idea of running it himself, I tend to worry about what will happen to the quality at the first restaurant.

“I just want to say thank you for being so honest and progressive. Your comments are spot on and the truth sometimes doesn’t sit well at first. However your constructive criticisms are a gift and motivation to be who I really want to be not just what Dallas will let me get away with.”

John Tesar wrote those words to me in March last year, a few days after I reviewed his seafood restaurant, Spoon Bar and Kitchen.

He went on (I’m reproducing his note unredacted): “I am also sorry for being a spoiled brat in the past but it’s been a rough few years for me and I am now just working through it. I remember our first talk back at DRG and have been trying to live up to it ever since. Sincerely thank you! No butt kissing it’s called experience and maturity. I must grow, produce or get out of the way.”

A couple weeks ago I reviewed his new steakhouse, Knife. His reaction was somewhat less introspective: He hurled an obscenity at me via Twitter.

Tesar’s tweet unleashed a stream of ugly invective from his friends and allies – some of it directed against me personally, some against critics in general, whom Tesar and his pals have proclaimed to have become irrelevant. The gang is too revved up to see the failed logic: If we’re irrelevant, why can’t they stop talking about this? The chef, meanwhile, has continued to harass me with a barrage of personal, obscenity-filled hate mail. With the clear intent of tarnishing my reputation, it adds up to a defamatory smear campaign.

While I said publicly that I stand by my review – a fairly positive one, by the way, with which the chef has not taken issue on any specifics — I chose not to get down in the mud with him to “defend” myself. His conduct speaks louder than anything I could ever write.

When people pointed out that my review was fair, balanced and largely positive, the chef swung around and said, OK, well, it wasn’t really about the review – it was personal. He maintained I had something against him. Two days later, when the print version hit the streets, the chef was on the cover of our weekend Guide section, beaming from his steak-aging locker, with the headline “John Tesar reinvents the steakhouse.” It was only the second time in five years I’ve featured a restaurant review on the cover — a testament to my belief about how important the restaurant and its chef are on the Dallas dining scene.

It was a decision based on the chef’s work, not his personality. I don’t know any Dallas chef personally. As does any critic with integrity, I deliberately avoid getting to know them. If I didn’t, unbiased coverage would be impossible. While I certainly keep in mind what it feels like – for chefs, line cooks, servers and managers – to be on the receiving end of a tough review (as an author, I know first-hand what a harsh review feels like), my job is to address what’s on the plates the chefs send out, what their restaurants feel like to diners, how diners are served in their restaurants.

I don’t work for the chefs. I work for our readers.

And more than ever, as people all over the country become more and more restaurant-obsessed and sophisticated about food, the role of professional critics has become more relevant. Eater, the restaurants website, which had never published its own dining reviews, recently hired three full-time restaurant critics – and a cookbook critic to boot. Is restaurant criticism dead? No – it’s more alive than ever.

Social media and the sharing culture has opened up our conversation about dining, both nationally and locally and wherever the two intersect. Yelp, Facebook, Twitter, reader comments following online reviews – it’s all important and worthwhile and fun. Engaging with readers in many of these forums is one of the most rewarding parts of my job. (Instagram, meanwhile, is for me the most fun and addictive.)

Many diners are looking for a voice they can trust. Professional restaurant critics are beholden to no one. Our publications pay our way. We make reservations using pseudonyms, so chefs can’t prepare anything special for us. We visit a restaurant at least twice, numerous guests in tow, so our assessment is based on a great number of meals. (I visited Knife four times, by the way.) We check our facts after we write. Restaurants are expensive; Dallas restaurants are insanely expensive. My role is to help readers navigate that world and make wise decisions about the hard-earned money they spend.

I don’t dictate what readers should think about restaurants any more than a film critic dictates whether people enjoy the movie or an art critic decides whether people have a positive reaction to what’s hanging in the gallery.

A critic’s role in any medium is not to be a dictator, but an informed, passionate voice on the subject. It is also to provide perspective, insight, context and analysis – not just about each restaurant, but about the dining scene as a whole. Where are we going, and where have we been? Are the chefs working today driving the scene forward or holding it back?

Do we disagree about a particular restaurant or a specific dish? Of course – that’s the point. And we engage each other and discuss it all the time – on Facebook, on Twitter, on the comments attached to reviews, everywhere. There will certainly be readers who disagree with this essay. Of course they’re welcome to. I’m eager to hear what they — and everyone else who wants to weigh in — have to say.

Brian Zenner's Copper River salmon with ramps, salsify and Texas caviar at Belly and Trumpet

It’s one of my favorite times of year: Copper River salmon season. Yes, as Kim Pierce pointed out in her story about wild salmon last week, salmon from other rivers in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest can be just as wonderful. But there’s a certain excitement in the air when the Copper River fish come into the markets and land on dining room tables — it’s such a gorgeous (and gorgeously flavored) fish.

Leslie Brenner/Staff

Copper River salmon with crushed potatoes and sorrel sauce at Cadot

The Copper River moment signals the height of wild salmon season — the part of the season when chefs all get excited about the fish and start being creative with it and showing it off to its best advantage. When I spot it — or other wild salmons — on menus, I have a very hard time not ordering it. Here’s a sampling of what you’ll find around town, followed by ways to cook it simply at home:

• A few weeks ago, Columbia River salmon made an appearance in the form of a luxurious salmon tartare that led off Bruno Davaillon’s $75, five-course asparagus menu at the Mansion Restaurant. Davaillon set it off with a horseradishy ice cream topped with trout roe and, of course, asparagus. Now he’s starting the asparagus menu with Copper River sashimi with mustard ice cream, white asparagus tips and smoked trout roe. On his regular menu, he’s offering a main course of slow-roasted salmon with Japanese eggplant, pickled radishes and pickled ramps finished with a black-garlic-miso condiment and a brown-butter-shallot bearnaise reduction. It’s yours for $42.

• At Spoon Bar and Kitchen, John Tesar sears Copper River salmon in a cast-iron pan and serves it with pea puree, a warm salad of spring peas, pickled morels, pearl onions and a pea tendril salad. The dish goes for $36.

• Belly and Trumpet‘s Brian Zenner features Copper River salmon as a “large plate,” with Texas caviar, ham hock, salsify and pickled ramps — for $28.

• At TJ’s Seafood Market and Grill, you can get Copper River sockeye salmon four ways: simply grilled; with lemon butter and capers; blackened, with creole sauce or pan-seared “crispy skin-up” for $28 (including two sides).

• Driftwood chef Kyle McClelland will be featuring roasted steelhead salmon as a special on Friday and Saturday, with pickled golden beets, whole roasted shiitake mushrooms and a white miso vinaigrette. The plate will be $30.

• Up in Far North Dallas, Jean-Marie Cadot has been offering Copper River salmon as a special at his namesake French restaurant, serving it with sorrel sauce over crushed potatoes. The plate goes for $36

• Sea Breeze Fish Market and Grill in Plano has just sold out of its supply of Copper River salmon, but chef Mike Schumacher expects a new shipment shortly. Last week he featured it, cedar-planked and served with arugula pesto and a roasted vegetable medly, as dining room special for $25.99 at lunch, $32.99 at dinner.

Have you lucked in to a great wild salmon plate lately? We’d certainly love to hear about it in a comment.

Of course you can also pick up some fabulous Copper River salmon and cook it yourself. I like to keep it very simple. My favorite way to cook it is low and slow, with just sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, in a pan with a little olive oil. I start with the fillet skin-side up, cooking it for just a minute over low heat, then I flip it and cooking it very gently until that it stays translucent in the center (just past medium-rare, I guess you’d say). (Cooking it on high heat makes it seize up and obscures the delicate flavor.) Or I poach it — placing a fillet in generously salted simmering water to cover, putting a lid on it and immediately turning off the heat. When the water’s cool, the fish is done. Then I chill it and serve it with a sauce made by combining lots of fresh dill with a mixture of about half Dijon mustard and half crème fraîche, a spoonful of local honey and salt and freshly ground white pepper to taste. (The sauce is best if it sits for a couple hours so the flavors meld.) Or I soak a cedar plank in water, fire up the (charcoal-powered) Weber, season it with just salt and pepper, set it skin-side-down on the plank, and cook it on the grill, covered, for 15 to 20 minutes (depending on the heat and the size of the fillet).

I found beautiful Copper River fillets on sale at Whole Foods over the weekend for $19.99 per pound. TJ’s (at both the Oak Lawn and Preston-Forest locations), and Sea Breeze will be selling it for $27.99 when the new shipment, expected on Thursday, arrives.

May has been a busy month on the Dallas dining scene, with the opening of a quartet of high-profile restaurants. Last week, Jon Stevens (Nosh Euro Bistro, Aurora) opened Stock and Barrel, a “modern American grill,” in the Bishop Arts District. This morning, Justin and Diane Fourton re-opened their barbecue sensation, Pecan Lodge — this time as a full-fledged restaurant — in new Deep Ellum digs.

Days before Stock and Barrel’s debut were openings for two of the city’s most prominent chefs: John Tesar and Stephan Pyles. I visited both restaurants this week for first-look dinners.

San Salvaje by Stephan Pyles is a casual Latin-American place in the former Samar space in the Dallas Arts District. The chef says it was inspired by his recent travels to South America; San Salvaje — pronounced San Sal-vah-hey — is translated from the Spanish as “wild saint.”

Renovations were long to complete, and with so much pre-opening fanfare (including a full-blown media lunch, which naturally I did not attend), I was surprised to find that it feels much the same as Samar —more like stopping for a bite in a museum cafe than dining. Pyles and co-owner George Majdalani kept the onyx bar, applied cosmetic tweaks to the dining room with the open kitchen and enclosed the patio to add another dining room. Alex Astranti, whose last gig was as executive sous chef at Stampede 66, is executive chef.

The dishes on the concise menu spin from Latin American tastes and techniques. To start, there are ceviches and tiraditos, tacos and tamales, causas and tacu tacus, arepas and empanadas, a few of which will feel familiar to fans of Stampede 66 or Stephan Pyles. To follow, there are “platos grandes” (big plates) and sweets. Tiraditos, for the uninitiated, are similar to Italian crudos; causas are Peruvian-style potato salads; tacu tacus are bean-and-rice patties.

Leslie Brenner/Staff

San Salvaje's yellowtail ceviche with crema de rocoto

One ceviche was ropes of yellowtail dressed in a crema spiced with rocoto (a Central and South American pepper) and enriched with puréed scallops. Another starter, llapingacho (Ecuadorian potato cake) came topped with a poached egg and paired with a salad of young mustard greens. The biggest hit at my table was a fried whole red snapper set on mango-habanero mojo and filled with deep-fried pickled green beans that sprung from the top of the fish like tempuraed dreadlocks.

Tesar’s modern steakhouse, Knife, inhabits the space at Hotel Palomar formerly occupied by Central 214. It has been glammed up quite a bit, with a loungier lounge, inviting banquettes and super-deep tables — large enough, presumably, to accomodate the 18-hour braised crispy pig’s head that’s on the menu but wasn’t yet being served. (240-day dry-aged rib eye isn’t available yet, either.) Brilliant green tiles back the long open kitchen with counter seating. White-jacketed servers circulate with the air of professors of meat.

Leslie Brenner/Staff

The 44 Farms bone-in ribeye at Knife

The menu is so deep and involved (“raw,” “new school,” “old school,” “exotic,” “slabs,” “slices”) that it’s hard to decide what to try the first time around. What’s important to know is that there’s something for every type of steak lover. Adventuresome yet thrifty? Go for the tri-tip, cooked sous vide then finished on a grill over a red-oak fire ($25). Wealthy and set in your ways? Ask for a 24-ounce 44 Farms bone-in ribeye ($65). It came to the table carved off the bone, easy to share among four of us, as one of several main courses.

You can also get a whole chicken roasted in the style of the late Judy Rogers, chef-owner of Zuni Cafe in San Francisco, and served family-style, on bread salad. Or braised pork jowl formed into patties and treated like veal Milanese.

Starters lead off the menu, of course —that’s where you’ll find ground-to-order steak tartare and a traditional French onion soup, or a beautiful pea shoot-and-country-ham salad. But hunt among the “exotic” dishes or slabs, and you’ll find more. Rounds of blood sausauge are topped with a sunny-side up egg; slabs of crispy beef tongue peek out from beneath a salad of arugula and heirloom cherry tomatoes.

A Melon Ball cocktail at Knife

When it comes to the wine list, you’d better not be too old fashioned: It’s on an iPad, as it is at Spoon Bar and Kitchen, Tesar’s seafood restaurant. Luddites fear not: just ask for sommelier Sabrina Snodderley’s help. You may remember her from Spoon, or from Gemma. Michael Martensen created the cocktail menu.

Another familiar face is in charge of the sweets: David Collier, a longtime pastry chef at the Mansion Restaurant, who now heads the sweet side at Spoon, as well as at Knife. (Insert Fork joke here.)

As they do at Spoon, Collier’s desserts have a modernist bent. Want to be comforted? Go for the one called “dark chocolate,” a parfait-like, creamy, chocolatey layered concoction served in a tall glass. I’m guessing you won’t care that there’s no Key lime pie.

Knife opens May 15 and will be located where Central 214 once was, in Hotel Palomar.

Before John Tesar’s new steakhouse opens this week in Dallas’ Hotel Palomar, take a glimpse at what’s on the lunch, dinner and bar menus. The talked-about item is the rib-eye aged 240 days (and priced at $80 an inch), but the menu also includes “new school” cuts like chuck flap and tri-tip — to interest those who would like to pay a little less for an alternative cut, Tesar says — and “old school” offerings like filet mignon and bone-in rib-eye.

See all the menus below. Knife opens May 15.

Burgers also make the menu, though their names don’t tell us much. Stay tuned for an explanation of what’s on the Magic, the Tail End, the OZERSKY and the Rib.

“What annoys me about every steakhouse is that the sides are terrible,” he says. “I like sides. A big slab of protein on your plate is great. But when you can get a good onion ring where the tempura doesn’t fall off the side?” (The answer, presumably, is at the Knife bar, where $8 onion rings are on the menu.) Other sides include avocado fries, mac and cheese and “something green and in season.”

Tables inside San Salvaje are painted purple (top left), red or orange. Picarones (top right) are doughnuts made with sweet potatoes and served with guanabana ice cream. One of the "platos grandes" (bottom) on the menu is modern ropa vieja, a stew made with flank steak and served with platanos rellenos -- a goat cheese and plantain patty -- plus compressed and seared short rib and a fried plantain on top.

If there were a list of most well-known chefs in Dallas, Stephan Pyles and John Tesar certainly would be on it. Both are opening restaurants in the coming days. Take a quick look inside each.

San Salvaje: opening date, May 1 May 13

Sarah Blaskovich

Chef Stephan Pyles described the grouper tiradito, on left, as like a ceviche. On the right, in the bowl, is a mushroom-huitlacoche empanada with corn shoot and guava puree.

At a lunch for members of the media at San Salvaje, chef Pyles introduced the group to his Mexican/Caribbean/Cuban/Central and South American menu inspired by his travels to those areas. One of the items on the menu is a foie gras tacu tacu – a bean and rice patty with foie and caramelized banana. Chef acknowledged that tacu tacu is a popular Peruvian dish, but “you probably wouldn’t find foie gras” there. Other items we tasted were a grouper tiradito – sort of like a ceviche, he explained – and a mushroom-huitlacoche empanada served in a corn shoot and guava puree.

Also on the menu at the Arts District restaurant: tacu tacu with dried cherry salsita, fried squid tacos with candied lime, fried whole snapper with mango-tamarind mojo, and lobster-coconut caldo (soup) with ginger and lime.

The interior of San Salvaje plays Catholic and Pagan themes against one another, as shown on a wall with crosses crammed next to skulls. Pyles explained it this way: During his travels, he’d see people inside a church saying Hail Marys. Outside, there were cockfights. “And they’d go back in and get saved again,” he says. “So that’s San Salvaje.”

The restaurant that used to be Samar still has an open kitchen and a patio. Now, the table tops are painted a bright purple, orange or red.

Pyles also owns Stampede 66, Sky Canyon (located at both airports) and his namesake place Stephan Pyles. OpenTable is already accepting reservations for San Salvaje.

2100 Ross Ave., Dallas. sansalvaje.com.

Knife:opening date, May 15

Chef John Tesar serves the 240-day dry-aged rib-eye.

We already knew chef Tesar’s new steak restaurant would sell rib-eyes aged 240 days. At a dinner for members of the media, Tesar sampled the rib-eyes, pointing to the room near the front door where diners can peek at the steaks as they age, with white mold developing on the them instead of black mold. Those go for $80-100 per inch and are meant for sharing. The long-aged rib-eyes have, according to Tesar, hints of “popcorn and truffles and blue cheese.”

“I’m John Tesar. I want to be different,” he says.

There’s not much to see inside Knife yet, as the room is vacant of tables and chairs and there’s a pile of construction equipment in an adjoining room. The food, says Tesar, is first and foremost focused on steak, though dishes throughout will share a retro ’50 theme. And though the interior will be modern, Tesar says it will have hints of the ’50s, as seen with the green-tiled bar and the brass chandelier. Female servers will wear dresses by local designer Abi Ferrin.

French onion soup and crudité are two of the starters Tesar says pay tribute to that ’50s throwback idea. To interest traditional steakhouse diners, the menu will have 45-day dry-aged rib-eyes and sirloin steaks, plus rack of lamb, roast chicken and short ribs, Tesar says. A large part of the menu will be alternative cuts like chuck flap, sirloin flap, tri tip and flatiron steak priced much lower, at $25 to $29 each, the chef explains.

“The one thing I never found at a steakhouse was affordability,” Tesar says. “I really want [Knife] to be fun and affordable.” (That 240-day dry-aged rib-eye would be a splurge, of course.)

Some of the sides are avocado fries, tempura onion rings, mac and cheese (“made like a French chef would,” Tesar says), roasted okra and a green — “something simple, something in-season.”

The bar menu will feature a reuben sandwich and a pork belly BLT, among other rotating items.

At the preview dinner, we sampled pork belly steamed buns stuffed with scallions and cucumber and topped with hoisin sauce; goat cheese puff pastry; steak tartare on naan; and the 240-day dry-aged rib-eye. Desserts were a cheesecake macaron with cheesecake mousse and dabs of raspberry jelly and liquid graham cracker on the side; and a dark chocolate pot au crème with layers of white chocolate panna cotta, flourless chocolate sponge cake and gianduja marshmallow.

Knife is the sister (or brother, maybe) to Tesar’s seafood restaurant Spoon Bar and Kitchen. It replaces what used to be Central 214 in the Hotel Palomar.

The front door to John Tesar's restaurant Knife (top) is to the right of the front door to Hotel Palomar. Some of the bites we tried at the media dinner included pork belly steamed buns (bottom left), chocolate pot au creme (bottom center) and a cheesecake macaron.

John Tesar, shown at Spoon Bar and Kitchen in 2012, will have plenty of treats to offer carnivores at Knife

In two or three weeks (if all goes according to plan), chef John Tesar will begin “friends and family” tastings at Knife, the modern steakhouse he’ll soon open at Hotel Palmomar. By the last week in April, “we’ll be ready to open,” he says. The chef, who first dazzled Dallas as executive chef at the Mansion in 2006, earning five stars in a review by then-restaurant critic Bill Addison, has long been known for being excitable, but with this project, he sounds just plain excited.

“I grew up loving red meat, just like everyone else,” he told me in a phone interview, after sending the Morning News Knife’s menu for an exclusive first look (find it here). “I wanted to do a meat restaurant, rather than just a steakhouse.” Knife is to “steakhouse,” in other words, as Spoon Bar and Kitchen is to “seafood restaurant” — meaning diners can expect something very different than what they’re probably used to. Spoon earned four stars in a review last year.

But Tesar wants this restaurant to have universal appeal: “We wanted to design something to bring the locals back to the Palomar Hotel,” he says. “Hotel guests, locals, wealthy people — we want to make this restaurant for everybody.”

Tesar’s ambitious menu features a quartet of “new school” steaks from 44 Farms in Cameron, Texas: a culet (also known as cube steak); chuck flap; skirt steak and tri-tip. Cube steak, really? Yes, says the chef, but the black Angus cattle are “small production and from amazing lineage. When I tasted them, I fell on the floor.” And it will all be prime. The 44 Farms cuts will be cooked sous-vide, then finished over a red-oak fire. And their prices will be friendly: $26 to $29. “We can send a $26 steak to someone who can’t afford to go to Pappas Bros.,” says Tesar.

At the other end of the meat spectrum, there will be “exotic” cuts, including a Niman Ranch rib-eye aged in-house 240 days. Yes, the better part of a year. Want to know more? The chef is happy to geek out: “I built a box that’s 40 degrees. We develop white mold on the meat, rather than black mold, the way most steakhouses do. You trim the exterior. It’s an acquired taste.” He expects to charge about $100 per steak for the long-aged cut, and he’ll only have two pieces from which he’ll slice them to start. “It’s the kind of item an entire table would like to try,” he says — adding that he’d expect people to order something like a tri-tip and a 240-day-aged steak to share for four people. “We expect to do a lot of sharing and family-style dining.”

Oh, and they might start with a bacon tasting. “People scream ‘bacon’ all the time, so we’re going to give it to them,” says Tesar. The tasting will include Neuske’s, a cherry-cured bacon from Vermont and a third bacon custom-cured for Knife near Boston, Mass. (More on that shortly.)

Other exotic cuts include a slow-roasted bison rib-eye, an Akaushi rib-eye and a double-cut long-bone pork chop. He expects to price those dishes “in the $30′s.”

Another section of the menu offers “slabs,” including house-cured pastrami, crispy beef tongue and an 18-hour braised crispy pig’s head, inspired by the one served at CBD Provisions. “I go there at least once a month for that dish,” says Tesar of chef Michael Sindoni’s creation. “It’s a beautiful dish. I had to do my own version of it.”

Meanwhile, the steak at CBD is what led Tesar to 44 Ranch, says the chef. He loved the chuck bone-in short rib and asked CBD’s chef about his sourcing.

For traditionalists, there will also be “old school” steaks, including 45-day dry-aged rib-eyes and bone-in sirloins from Niman Ranch, a rack of Colorado lamb and 72-hour slow-braised short rib, along with a “simple roast chicken.” The whole bird will be roasted in mirepoix, perhaps presented at the table, carved in the kitchen and served on a panzanella salad with a pan juice sauce. “I’m trying to nail the perfect roast chicken,” says Tesar. “If we can teach the cooks that, we’ve accomplished something.” The “old school” dishes will be $32 to $34.

Cured meats will figure prominently, too; mostly they’ll come from Moody’s Delicatessan and Provisions near Boston, Mass. Moody’s owner Joshua Smith, says Tesar, will be coming to Dallas to train the staff. “I developed the recipes and the aging,” he adds. Among the Moody’s meats will be two-hour-smoked pork belly, mortadella, bacon (included on the tasting), liverwurst, blood sausage, head cheese, lardo, guanciale, country ham, salumi and more. The chef has not yet decided whether there will be a charcuterie plate or guests will select their own. “I’m thinking we’ll give them a choice, because I like to have a choice,” he says, “not have someone choose for me.” In any case, it will be “quite expensive.”

Finally, there will be burgers — cooked in the signature CVap (Control Vapor Technology) style the chef developed at the Commissary, his erstwhile burger place in One Arts Plaza.

All this excitement about meats doesn’t mean vegetables will be ignored. “When you come in, there will be a nice bowl of crudités on the table. That’s old school. And we’ll have a little beef jerky for the Texans.” But there’s plenty of intriguing greenery (and beige-ery) in the side dishes, like pommes soufflés, roasted okra with tomato and bacon, vegetarian collard greens and “something green and in season” (that’s the way it reads on the menu).

David Collier, Spoon’s executive pastry chef, will be doing modernists desserts as well. Michael Martensen is creating the cocktails, Scott Barber has created the opening wine list and Sabrina Snodderly has signed on as sommelier. Jeff Kent (Arizona 206, Bistro 26 in New York) is chef de cuisine.

So, how will John Tesar run two important kitchens at once? “For the first month,” he says, “I’ll be going back and forth.” He adds that he has tremendous confidence in Kent, with whom he worked in New York. “After? I’d love to give you an answer on how I’ll do both, but I haven’t figured that out yet.”

Sabrina Snodderly, the affable, engaging sommelier at Gemma who helped the restaurant earn a spot on our list of The Best in DFW: Wine Experiences less than three weeks ago, has one foot out Gemma’s door. April 2 will be her last day at the Henderson Avenue hotspot, says Gemma’s publicist, Lindsey Miller. Snodderly also helped the restaurant earn three stars in a review last month.

Snodderly will be headed to Knife, John Tesar‘s upcoming restaurant at Hotel Palomar. Scott Barber, who was wine director at Tesar’s erstwhile burger spot the Commissary, has already created a wine list for Knife, says Tesar, who hopes to “be ready for friends and family” April 15 and to open May 1. So why did Tesar have Barber create a list when Snodderly’s about to come on board? “The owners asked me to move so quickly,” Tesar told me in an email, “and at the time I had no idea that Sabrina would want to leave Gemma, nor did I want to steal her back. We had a long talk and it was totally up to her to make the move.” Going forward, he adds, “it will be her list and Scott will not be involved at all.” Snodderly and Tesar have worked together in the recent past: She was his opening sommelier at Spoon Bar and Kitchen, which is also included among the restaurants listed in The Best in DFW: Wine Experiences.

More Knife news: Star barman Michael Martensen (formerly of Smyth and the Cedars Social) will create the cocktail list, says Tesar, who also confirms that he has brought Jeff Kent aboard as chef de cuisine. The appointments of Snodderly and Kent were first reported on Escape Hatch.

As for Gemma, I’m not terribly worried about the fate of its wine program. Its current wine list is a collaboration between Snodderly and co-owner Allison Yoder. I have the impression that Yoder has a deep commitment to and knowledge of wine, and it wouldn’t even surprise me (or particularly worry me) if Yoder decided to take full charge of the wine program herself. Yoder is considering a replacement for Snodderly, says Miller, but “no final decision has been made.”

Adds Miller about Snodderly’s decision: “I’ve been told that she loved working at Gemma but has the opportunity for full benefits at Knife.”